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Names are funny things, important things, and they fascinate me; indeed, my second novel, The Hope Fault, is at least partly about names and naming. I spend a lot of (aka too much) time mulling over character names in my writing. I love to name my chapters, too, title them rather than just giving them numbers or leaving them bareheaded. I have been known to come up with a title first, then write something to match.
I was pleased to hear that, in this, I’m in the fine company of Elizabeth McCracken. In a session at Auckland Writers Festival last month, McCracken confessed that she ...

O, the month of May, the merry month of May,
So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green!
‘The Merry Month of May’ by Thomas Dekker (1599)
The month just past (So frolic. Much gay. Many green. Wow.) would’ve warranted a celebratory skip around the maypole, if it hadn’t been a bit chilly and rainy for maypole-skipping in these parts. I’ll make do with a Merry May listicle, instead.
Marking 20 years living in Wellington. We (the husband and I, fresh-faced, fresh from five years in Vancouver) arrived in New Zealand on Anzac Day 1996, and spent a cold and boozy week visiting ...

Though it’s been creeping into shops (online and bricks-and-mortar) for the past few weeks, and already gaining some glowing early online reviews, today – 9 January 2016 – marks the official UK publication date for The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt (Aardvark Bureau).
To celebrate, this is my virtual group hug to all involved, including but not limited to:
The Aardvark Bureau/Gallic Books/Belgravia Books team, especially Jane Aitken and Emily Boyce, for bringing The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt to the big wide world.
Former Aardvarkian Scott Pack, for stumbling upon The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt and bringing it to the Aardvark Bureau list ...

In his blog post ‘The Aardvark emerges’, Scott Pack talks about the list of upcoming titles due from Aardvark Bureau in the first half of 2016. The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt (January 2016) is joined on the list by novels from two much-loved Wellington authors: Fiona Kidman‘s The Infinite Air (March 2016), and Damien Wilkins’ Max Gate. Fellow Fremantle Press author Robert Edeson‘s first novel, The Weaver Fish, is out in April from Aardvark.
We have already published three books…Next year will see Aardvark Bureau in full flow. We kick off in January with a debut from New Zealand…The Life and Loves of Lena ...

Liz Byrski was interviewed recently on WritingWA‘s Cover to Cover, about her most recent book, In Love and War: Nursing Heroes. Cover to Cover host Meri Fatin described the process of writing In Love and War as “as almost like a piece of plastic surgery in itself”.
In this short excerpt from the 40-minute interview, Liz talks about what she learned from writing In Love and War. She also has some warm and generous things to say about my book, The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt.
Here are links to the whole episode featuring Liz, as well as previous episodes.
Cover to Cover Ep. 4: Liz Byrski, In Love and ...

My month as Writer in Residence in Mildura is already half over. How did that happen?
Melbourne first
The trip started with a 24-hour stopover in Melbourne. I spent much of the day working at the State Library of Victoria. What a treat to be able to waltz in, get a library card, request (and receive within half an hour) in-library use only references, all so easily and smoothly. I liked Hannie Rayson’s piece about the State Library, in The Age last weekend.
Later in the day I met up with two until-then online-only writerly pals who, as it happens, both have books ...

Next month’s going to be all about Mildura, so I’m going to keep this post short and sweet, as a taste of what’s to come.
I’ve been lucky enough to be awarded the inaugural Mildura Writers Festival Residency. The residency is an initiative of Arts Mildura and the Mildura Writers Festival. During the month (July 2015) of the residency, I’ll have time and space to keep working on my current project, my second novel, The Hope Fault. As part of the residency I’ll also be writing blogs for the festival, and hosting a writing workshop or two in the community — great ...

The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt caught the ear and eye of UK publisher Scott Pack in November 2014, and he rated it #2 in his top ten reads of 2014, calling it:
An incredible debut and a novel so believable that I wish it were true.
In March 2015, Scott launched Aardvark Bureau, a new imprint of UK publisher Gallic Books.
I am curating what can only be described as an eclectic mix of titles. There will be fiction from around the world. There will be debuts. There will be the first UK publication for some authors long overdue an audience here.
Now ...

I’m not sure whether the 2000-odd-seat ASB Theatre was sold out for Tim Winton’s Auckland Writers Festival 2015 (AWF15) session last Sunday morning, but it was certainly close to packed, and there was a lot of love in the room for Winton. I was seated wa-a-aay up in the gods, which felt like an appropriate place from which to watch the sometimes godly Winton (session chair Jim Mora commented that “the hand of God is in your work” — and it is, that Christian mysticism, and it’s always been an element in Winton’s writing that’s unsettling for me as a ...

I’m looking forward to heading up to Auckland next month for Auckland Writers Festival. This’ll be my third time heading up to Auckland for the writers festival (I wrote about the 2014 festival here and here), but my first time on the programme. The festival has got bigger and better each year that I’ve been, with lots of sold out sessions, enthusiastic audiences, and a really great buzz-y atmosphere.
I’m in one of the Four for Fifty Readings sessions — fifty-minute events in which four writers read from their recent work. Each session is themed; ours is Loss and Love. I’ll be ...

I spent the first two weeks of March at Varuna, the Writers House in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, a two-hour train ride from Sydney. I was lucky enough during my Second Book Residential Fellowship to work in Eleanor Dark’s garden studio, a short enough walk from the back door of the main house that I didn’t spill my tea on the way.
Writers who work in the studio are invited to leave a few pages of their work in one of the manuscript drawers that line one wall of the room, in a bank of some twenty separate drawers. I left my few pages ...

Lately I’ve been keeping a low profile, online and in real life. On 1 January this year I officially became a full-time writer — if only for six months — thanks to a CreativeNZ grant. In November last year, when I was looking ahead, imagining this time, I wrote about being
hunched at my writing desk for six months
But it’s been a perfect summer so far here in Wellington — the warmest, driest, least windy summer since 1962, apparently — so instead of hunching over my desk, I’ve spent most of these first two months under the pōhutakawa tree in our back yard, ...

2014 was a year that saw quite a few long-held dreams come true, for me, so I hope I can be forgiven a trumpetblowing review of the year’s highlights. I give you: some dreams and their fulfilment (plus some other writing highlights).
Being invited to a writers festival
I’ve sat in the dark in the audience for so many years, wondering if I’d ever make it onto the stage, and that happened in 2014 at three festivals (Perth in February; New Zealand Festival in Wellington, March; WORD Christchurch in August) in two countries. It was as much fun as I’d ever imagined.
Having my novel long- or shortlisted for ...

Last week, I won the 2014 Sunday Star-Times Short Story Award for my story ‘Once had me’. The story was published in the Sunday Star-Times over the weekend. The SS-T Short Story Award, now in its 30th year, has been won by some of New Zealand’s best (and my favourite) writers — including Sarah Quigley, Eleanor Catton, Sarah Laing, Barbara Anderson — and is a great annual showcase for New Zealand short fiction.
The award’s open category was judged this year by Sarah Quigley, a writer I’ve long admired. It was a strange and wonderful experience at the award event on ...

It’s taken me a week to post this, a week in which “t”s have been being crossed, and “i”s dotted (aka six months leave from the day job negotiated).
I’ve been awarded an Arts Grant (Literature) by Creative New Zealand. The grant will fund me to write full-time for the first six months of 2015. What a thrill; what an opportunity: what a relief.
You’ll find me hunched at my writing desk for six months from 1 January 2015. I’m hoping that six-month hunch will see me re-draft and finish The Hope Fault, the novel I’ve been working on this year.
Can I hear a rousing cheer ...